Until Your Breathing Stops
by c-r-roberts
Summary: When she receives the bow and sheath of arrows, made out of shining expensive metal and perfectly tailored to her small frame, she doesn't realize at the time exactly what it takes to get them to her. It's not until months after her victory that Katniss finds out that really, he's the reason she's crowned victor. In Panem AU.


When she receives the bow and sheath of arrows, made out of shining expensive metal and perfectly tailored to her small frame, she doesn't realize at the time exactly what it takes to get them to her. Because she's shivering cold, and she's been tucked away in that damp cave for over two days, and in the moment, they just mean that she might not starve to death. And that she might finally stand a fighting chance inside this arena.

Ultimately, they're the arrows that save her life; the reason she's crowned victor of the 73rd Hunger Games.

But it's not until months after her victory that Katniss finds out that really, _he's_ the reason she's crowned victor.

Peeta Mellark. Her mentor. Well, one of her mentors. The one who won two years prior to her. The golden baker's boy whose genuinely sweet smile and winning charm had sponsors absolutely drooling over him during his Games. Especially after he'd told all of Panem about his unrequited love for a girl back home who'd never even noticed him until he was reaped.

To this day, no one knows who that girl is.

And many of the Capitol women who flock to him now still try to comfort him over it. Some even try to replace her.

But it's actually Katniss's other mentor, the one who's older, the one who's lived the last 25 years watching children die as others cheer and bet and laugh, that clues her in on why she absolutely owes Peeta Mellark her life.

It happens on her Victory Tour; on the train somewhere between Districts 7 and 6, and Peeta stalks off after Katniss says something surly about having to celebrate the fact that 23 others have died just so she can live, because she's had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that she's survived at all. She hadn't planned on surviving.

And she'd never wanted to live _this_ life, anyway.

That's just about what she says, actually.

Haymitch waits until Peeta disappears completely down the hall and they hear the click of his bedroom door closing behind him. Then he turns to her, his expression a mix of pity and simultaneous disgust.

"Do you have any idea what that kid did for you, Sweetheart?" He spits the pet name at her specifically because he knows she hates it.

Katniss's narrows her eyes at him for it, but her interest piques regardless.

"Exactly _how_ he kept you alive?" He asks while shaking his head at her, as if he can't believe she doesn't already understand. "What do you think the going rate is for a set of silver bow and arrows these days?"

And Katniss sinks back into the rich velvet of her chair, suddenly feeling very small under Haymitch's stern words and implied meanings.

"One night with a victor? Two?"

After that, she's able to figure out the rest on her own. And, satisfied that he's put her in her place, Haymitch gets up too.

"So do me a favor, Sweetheart. The next time you want to talk about dying, don't do it in front of him."

And he leaves her sitting there, all alone.

* * *

><p>When Spring comes, and this year's Games are just around the corner, Peeta's face goes white when Haymitch tells him it'll probably be easier if he's the one who fills her in on the expected responsibilities of a victor. <em>Especially the newly minted ones.<em>

And Katniss glares at Haymitch, before turning to Peeta and holding up a hand in protest.

"It's okay," she tells him quietly, before swallowing the bile that rises in her throat.

Peeta's just returned from a week-long stay in the Capitol. When Katniss had asked Effie why she wasn't required to attend—not really minding, but curious anyway—Effie had chirped nonchalantly that it was simply because Katniss hadn't turned eighteen yet. But that she shouldn't worry about being left out again, because that would all change soon, since her birthday is in a few weeks.

"I think I get the picture," she mumbles, spinning on her heel and fleeing from the weekly strategy meeting that Peeta requires the three of them to have.

He calls her name softly after her, but she ignores it. Because what can Peeta tell her that she doesn't already know?

* * *

><p>This year, Katniss's first as a mentor, District 12's tributes are a pair of fighters. She doesn't know either of them personally, which had given her a sad, sick, sense of relief, but even Haymitch and Peeta agree that one of their tributes may stand a chance.<p>

If only each of them didn't insist on dying for the other.

Apparently, they're in love. Peeta quietly proclaims over breakfast that they should strategize to save the girl, since the boy insists on protecting her inside the arena anyway. So maybe with him working on the inside, and them working on the outside, District 12 could have its third victor in four years.

But Katniss just shakes her head at him, dropping her jewel-encrusted fork to her plate.

"She'll never go for it."

And Peeta sighs, watching Katniss carefully.

"She doesn't have to know."

* * *

><p>Peeta approaches her three nights later, looking flawlessly handsome in a Capitol-tailored suit, just as an overly eager purple-tinged man begins to kiss her up and down her outstretched arm—rather than the <em>hand<em> she'd been expecting—as she's silently repeating that this could save someone's life.

"I'm so sorry to interrupt, sir, but if you'll excuse me, I have to ask Katniss for this dance." The man drops her arm in confusion, and Katniss turns to him, feeling an enormous sense of gratitude. Although she's a little confused herself.

Peeta smiles sheepishly at her prospective suitor.

"This song. It means something special back home in District 12. And she's just so beautiful tonight. So. May I?"

The purple man reluctantly relents.

And Katniss gladly lets Peeta whisk her away.

Although when he begins their slow, steady steps on the dance floor, Katniss furrows her brow. This song means absolutely nothing in District 12. The only songs they have back home are the ones played on fiddles and washboards. They even have to bring in Capitol musicians for the two big parties their district throws each year.

His blue eyes stare back at her the way they tend to do when she can tell that Peeta has a plan. She's grown used to it by now. Peeta always has plans. Strategies. Things he thinks they need to do in order to stay alive.

Then he pulls her close to him, her ribcage brushing against his, and Peeta whispers in her ear.

"I've got an idea."

From a distance, they look just like two mentors sharing a dance. Peeta's hand slides down her back, resting at the small of it.

An intimate dance.

"What if," he begins, and his breath on the sensitive skin of her neck makes her feel something warm, creating an unfamiliar sensation in the pit of her belly. "What if I told you I think I have a way to stop all of this? So that we don't have to sell ourselves to strangers."

Katniss pulls back from him slowly, studying his face, not quite understanding. Because of course that sounds like a wonderful escape. Especially right about now, as she catches her purple friend's scrupulous eyes on them.

"How?" she asks him skeptically.

Peeta turns her on the dance floor, drawing her back into his arms and pressing his mouth to her ear.

"Well, we'd have to sell ourselves in a different kind of way. But I think it's better than the alternative."

* * *

><p>It turns out that Katniss is Peeta's unrequited love. His unknown girl back home.<p>

At least that's what he tells a Capitol reporter on the day of the tributes' interviews.

He's so earnest and smooth and charming that Katniss almost believes him herself. Peeta explains to the reporter that it was their tributes that inspired him to finally admit his true feelings. By now, everyone in Panem knows that District 12 has a pair of star-crossed lovers fighting in this year's Games. And their dedication to keeping the other alive, against all odds, gave Peeta the courage to tell Katniss that he loves her.

Lucky for him, she loves him back.

The Capitol eats it up. They've gone absolutely insane for District 12. And not just for the mentors and their unbelievable love story with a happy ending, but also for the tributes and their unfairly doomed destiny as well.

That's when Katniss realizes what a truly gifted manipulator Peeta Mellark is.

* * *

><p>Their tributes manage to stay alive until it's just the two of them left. She and Peeta have to kiss, and hold hands, and give a few more interviews to garner enough sponsors to make it happen, but neither of them has to touch anyone but the other.<p>

They have cameras trained on them in what Capitol TV calls the _mentoring strategy room_, where Peeta and Katniss, and Haymitch too, are watching the live footage from the arena.

Their tributes do it so quickly, though. Unthinkingly quick. As if there's no other option.

The Gamemakers don't have the time to stop them even if they'd wanted to.

Katniss is stoic as she watches her tributes die. She understands their reasoning, if not their motive. Because it's not about not being able to live without someone else. Usually, it's about not being able to live with herself. Peeta, however, goes puke green. And she's pretty sure when he excuses himself to use the bathroom, he really does throw up.

Clearly, he wasn't expecting their stunt with the berries.

Katniss is left behind to answer interviewers' questions about her thoughts. And she does a pretty good job of feigning distress, of pretending to be absolutely devastated. But when one reporter offhandedly comments that at least District 12 still has their mentors' happily ever after, she's not so sure it shouldn't be the other way around.

* * *

><p>Their tributes' double suicide has the Capitol in turmoil. No one knows how to react to the Games having no victor. People here can't fathom those in the Districts wanting anything else but achieving fame, success, wealth. Virtual royalty. In their suite, Effie sobs, and Haymitch warns them that things are going to get bad. That there's no way that Snow's happy with this result.<p>

And that the three of them are going to be to blame.

Haymitch's warning upsets Peeta more than her too.

Katniss checks on him that night in his room.

It's not the first time they've shared a bed. They've spent a couple of other nights together, on the train, over the past two years. But only when her screams have woken him and they learned that his arms holding her had helped quiet them.

But tonight, it's not so innocent.

He seems so distraught. So guilty. She wants to help. And she can't stop herself from pressing her lips against his warm, wet ones, making his sad eyes flutter closed, slipping her fingers into his hair and stroking the nape of his neck gently, thinking it might soothe him.

But it has the opposite effect on Peeta. It awakens him. She's surprised by it, but when he starts to touch her, his hands roaming and desperate, she realizes she's never felt hunger quite like this.

"I'm not lying, you know," Peeta tells her after they finish; after he fills her whole and makes her come, after she's ridden him to waves of intense pleasure and his name's fallen off her lips like an urgent chant.

"Katniss. You're the girl. The girl from back home."

He whispers it, right against her skin, so softly she's not sure he really says it. But when he explains, his voice still kept so low she has to strain to hear him even though his mouth hovers her ear, it makes sense.

After Peeta won his Games, he'd tried not to play by the Capitol's rules at first.

Then his middle brother ended up flogged and left nearly dead in the middle of District 12's square, and the Peacekeepers had claimed it was because he'd broken curfew—an archaic law no one followed or ever got in trouble for.

And his disobedience is why his family's bakery unexpectedly burned to the ground, incinerated by nothing detectable and for no apparent reason; and Peeta had to use half his year's winnings to rebuild it while taking in his displaced family and having to keep the district in baked goods from his new home in Victor's Village.

It's also why the two tributes from 12 in the 72nd Hunger Games both died on the first day in their arena—neither by hand to hand combat, but by Gamemaker created mutts and fireballs.

Peeta pulls back from her then„ his blue eyes wide, worried, and filled with warning as he stares into her gray eyes as they finally understand.

"Katniss, it's why you were reaped."

He sighs, his eyes blinking shut and then reopening to stare into his bedsheets.

"And it's how they finally got me."

She kisses him hard, then, kissing away his protesting muffled sounds, swallowing the words he tries to say—the ones he uses to tell her it's okay, that he's not expecting her to love him back, and that it's enough for him to love her, and know that she's safe—at least as safe as he can make her.

But Katniss can't let him carry that burden by himself.

And she wants to keep Peeta safe too.

* * *

><p>Then the next night, at the victory party, that goes on even though there's no victor, there's an unmistakable chill to President Snow's eye when he gazes upon her, watching her dance with Peeta. She's thankful Peeta doesn't notice; she doesn't want to worry him. Because she knows it's the President's warning. And it comes just as she realizes that Peeta's more than just necessary to survive. He's necessary to her every movement, to her every breath.<p>

But none of that matters now.

Because she knows that they're doomed too.

And when the Quarter Quell's announced a few months later, months after she and Peeta have moved into the same house in Victor's Village, and just a few weeks after the wedding's been announced, she's not surprised at all to learn she's headed back to the arena.

But she's still devastated.

Though unlike last year's star-crossed lovers, this time, only one of them is going to die. And she'll get to do it while saving Peeta.


End file.
